Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
With the advance of networking and data processing technologies, online games are an increasingly widespread phenomenon. Online (as well as locally installed) games are ever more complex in image quality. Indeed, the line between digitally generated game renderings and captured video is constantly blurring. To take advantage of high quality image games, players often use television sets as display devices. Because television sets are primarily geared to displaying broadcast (wirelessly or through cable) video images, they tend to have circuitry for improving received signals.
Modern televisions have significant in-set image processing that they apply in an attempt to improve image quality. For example, some television sets attempt to reduce blur and improve motion smoothness due to the television refreshing at a higher frequency than a typical refresh rate for a standard TV signal. In-set signal processing may impact a number of display characteristics such as improve perceived motion smoothness or decrease a quality provided by anti-aliasing in the original signal, which presents a different set of optimal game rendering conditions than unprocessed video. Some systems with frame-to-frame background sharpening also reduce the amount of detail needed in each frame for the background in order to present the user with the same image.
Thus, in-set mechanisms for enhancing displayed image quality in television sets may work against pre-processed images in video games, either reducing effects of pre-processing or causing over-correction of images resulting in “fake” appearance of the game images.